Posted
by
samzenpuson Wednesday May 16, 2012 @10:07PM
from the all-your-internet-are-belong-to-us dept.

First time accepted submitter cvenky writes "The Indian Government is proposing to create an intergovernmental body 'to develop internet policies, oversee all internet standards bodies and policy organizations, negotiate internet-related treaties and sit in judgment when internet-related disputes come up.' This committee will be funded and staffed by the UN and will report to the UN General Assembly which effectively means the control of the internet passes on to World Governments directly."

I could get behind this if it weren't the entire General Assembly, but instead just a selection of governments with some kind of free speech and representative democracy. Letting countries like China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Iran even have a vote seems ludicrous.

Give me a break. There is no government, no government on earth that wants a true free internet.So in my view its better these governments "fight" each other and leave the internet alone (mostly) than have them banded together and destroy it with certainty.

If you're talking about this [wikipedia.org], well, it's still up in the air. My cursory read of the articles tells me that it would mainly be about eliminating tariffs between South Asia countries. The cynic in me says that it's all about setting up cheap and exploitable labor in those countries to reduce costs.

And okay, that's where we failed. Shit like NAFTA has, ironically, put the people it was supposed to help out of business (such as Mexican corn farmers, a lot of whom now grow something else entirely). But our government has always been pretty shitty about stuff like this, but what are you gonna do? It won't affect an everyday American's ordinary life like SOPA, PIPA, or ACTA would, so you won't really see any action against it build up any sort of momentum, unfortunately.

tl;dr: America writes up shitty laws just like nearly every other country in history, but on the ones mentioned we're 3 for 4 in keeping those shitty laws from passing.

The US isn't perfect, no one is saying that. No one is saying the US is the best. Compared to THOSE countries? Compared to the amount of freedom that can be found on MOST of the planet? Yes, the fucking US is better than that.

Jesus fucking christ and this drivel was modded INSIGHTFUL? You want some real problems with limitations and outright lack of free speech, travel *outside* the US for once in you

The US sells them vast amounts of US military hardware every year and if the US government had any sort of problem with the utter lack of any democracy there it could bankrupt them very quickly by not buying their oil. Of course that will never happen though as the US would rather Saudi stayed as friendly monarchy with a shit human rights record as most of the general populace are muslim and would probably elect a bunch extremist anti-amer

Find somewhere in Asia that isn't Japan and S. Korea that even pretends to know what rights are.

Somewhere has to be the bottom of the heap of "free" nations, anyway. I should have added Israel to that list, in retrospect -- but Japan and S. Korea still have all the rest of Asia beat, and Africa is just a fucking joke of a continent.

10 years ago I might've included Russia on that list, but... I hesitate, today.

Lazy analysis. Even if no government wants a truly free Internet, there are still differences between all the other governments. And quite frankly, the US is on a very short list of countries I'd like to see have control over the Internet.

The UN controlling the Internet will be a lowest common denominator kinda issue, and that will be to regulate pretty much everything. Do not want. And that's coming from someone who supports the UN far more than the average american.

The reasons international governance would be better is the same reason continuous coalition/minority governments give healthier democracies - the only legislation that can be passed is that which is common sense and not controversal. Legislation that is highly controversal like censorship ends up tied up in battles that last for eternity and so never reach agreement for implementation.

It's not use arguing that we should just trust the US because the rest of the world wants to censor the net - the US and ev

There is one difference between US and Indian attempts to censor the internet. The USG is clearly in the pockets of big media and industry, targetting sites which distribute "pirated" materials and "fake" products.

On December 5, 2011, The New York Times' India Ink reported that the Indian government had asked several social media sites and internet companies, including Google, Facebook and Yahoo, to "prescreen user content from India and t

The US is about equal to all those you list in terms of civil rights, meaningful free speech (not just the playstuff that's actually allowed), levels of corruption and levels of actual democracy.

I agree that none of those listed should have a voice, but by the same standard neither should the US. At present, the US has very near absolute power. The GA may have depraved and corrupt elements, but on aggregate it's no worse than the US on any metric and at times is a whole lot better.

Ideally, the Internet would be run by a meritocratic UN group, with all nations recognizing and respecting a group that chooses members by merit and acts on merit. There have been *cough* enough incidents where nations (US included) have actively sought to cripple meritocratic groups that I do not believe such a group could function. It would lack the teeth necessary to impose its decisions and to work it would need Predator X-like teeth.

By all means, go live in one of those places and the the US and tell me they are anywhere near equal. I'll wait.

The US created the Internet, with all of the assorted freedoms it has right now. I can't think of any other place it could have been created, including most of Western Europe. You may feel butthurt about American hegemony and some of the bad decisions made under that umbrella, but you need a little perspective.

It is true that the US is still nowhere near North Korea police state, yet, but it is walking at a very good pace in that direction. It won't likely get all the way to there, at least I hope not, but it will probably go far enough in that direction to be a considerable threat to the world, and considering what US can do and what North Korea can do, US is a much greater threat than North Korea could ever dream to be.

I beg to disagree. I am Brazilian and although my country has a LOT of problems it is certainly not going in this direction faster than US. The same can be said about a lot of developing countries and even most of the European countries, with some exceptions (UK comes to my mind). US certainly has a lot of laws protecting free speech and such, but laws are useless if the price of justice is not affordable and its decisions are each day less technical and more political. Add that to the fact that even these

The US created the internet by accident. The technology was designed for a military communications network that could continue to function in the event of severe infrastructure damage from nuclear war. Then it became available to universities, and eventually some companies started offering connectivity to anyone. If you gave a few high-up officials a time machine and a chance to do it all over again, they'd probably engineer it from the beginning to include a government-controlled censorship system, a means

Inventing something does not grant a right to control it later - otherwise, you would not need the FCC to allocate radio spectrum but leave that to Italy; and if Ford wanted to make changes to a car model they should ask Germany. And so on.

Someone has to run at least the DNS system. It's the only internet resource people will fight over. One IP or AS number is just like another, so all you need is a simple administrative body to make sure two people don't try to use the same one. But DNS? That's a source of endless disputes, and so long as those domains remain a source of substantial income that will be the case. So a body is needed to resolve them. Right now, that is ICANN and their resolution procedure can be summed up as 'the side with the

One IP or AS number is just like another, so all you need is a simple administrative body to make sure two people don't try to use the same one.

Yeah, true with current or foreseeable future protocols. Not necessarily impossible to avoid, though - what if networks were addressed by public keys in a large sparse space, and you could just randomly generate them when needed?

That's a source of endless disputes, and so long as those domains remain a source of substantial income that will be the case. So a bod

Mapping fixed terms to IP addresses is easy enough, the problem is meaningfulness to humans.
- If the terms are meaningful, then they will have value. Companies of similar name will dispute who gets one. There will be issues relating to names used for satire or protest. Some will be worth millions, which means lots of legal action. This is the situation with DNS. It works, it also leads to the plague of the cyber-squatters and the type of hugely expensive legal action that only lawyers benefit from.
- If th

To measure political speech, I would use a list like this [rsf.org], which is much less subjective than your opinion. It looks to me like the dividing line is somewhere in the middle of that list, but that is obviously IMHO. The bottom of that list is straight out.

I can't think of any "meritocratic" groups in existence that don't have the US and sometimes Russia or Canada with a veto over the decisions of the body, ala the UN. We don't know if a meritocratic group could or would function, because we've never had one. The US and others have always insisted on having a "final say" through a veto, as if their form of "democracy" is inherently better than others despite the wide spread and blatant corruption caused by lobbying and well-heeled lobbyists.

The US has done far, far worse than expected, ICANN has shown that they really can't and the FCC has utterly destroyed any possibility of it doing anything by treating the Internet as not a communication system. The major ISPs are acting like gangsters, using extortion and running protection rackets via the death of network neutrality.

Leaving it where it is WILL kill the Internet as we know it. You WILL lose what freedoms you still have, if power doesn't shift soon.

I don't know if the UN will do any better, but they sure as hell can't do worse and there are no other international organizations capable of the task.

I'm not seeing how some sort of UN group, particularly a GA based one, is going to favorably address any of the points you brought up at all.

And hell yes, the UN can do worse, I mean, there's only one country that *has* controlled the Internet including the time that you think the Internet was any good. So your plan is to say, anyone *must* better than the people who ran it when it did have freedom? I really just don't think you can make a statement like that with any credibility.

Well, no, the US didn't control the Internet when it was any good, the NSF did. (No, the DARPA days weren't better, DARPA's screwball decisions are why the Internet protocols are as messed up as they are.) The NSF isn't run by Congress or Corporations. One option would be for the NSF to claim eminent domain, seize all fibre (lit and dark) in the US or owned by US organizations, and run the lot on rational principles.

However, that would only cover the US. The Internet is very global. Even CERN is primarily European. We need a UN body for the global reach, but it would need to meet the following criteria to actually work:

* It needs to be quasi-independent* Members should be elected purely on merit, not on grounds of money or territory covered* Officials should be 75% from the academic community and 25% from the InfoSec community, NOTHING from the political or corporate communities* The organization should be primarily concerned with research, collaborative projects and the information demands of science* The Internet should be a means to achieve the desired end results, not an end in itself* Since this limits direct law-enforcement options, it would need to have significant muscle (eg: veto powers in the IMF and WTO) to ensure nations complied

However, let's assume the GA wants to take over and not create a meaningful NSF-like body. Actual gangsters and dictators hold onto power because they know what they can take and when not to push too hard. The KKK was well-known for charity work, not because they gave a crap but because it's by far the easiest way to manipulate the hearts and minds of those peons and fools they needed to be compliant. Corporations hold onto power through smoke, mirrors and legislation. They take it all and don't give a crap about pushing too hard because customers are expendable. I have zero faith in the mob, but that's still far more faith than I'll ever have in a megacorp.

I'd also point to Japan where actual mobsters and criminal gangs ARE in charge of many areas of law enforcement -- the nation has better Internet than the US (eg: gigabit to the home), better medical care, lower levels of (unlicensed) crime, lower levels of overt violence and far better sushi. It's an actual real-life embodiment of Terry Pratchett's Thieves' Guild. (I would not be surprised if Terry Pratchett got the idea from them, since many of his books are sourced in real-world ideas.)

That's far from ideal, and I repeat I have zero faith in it, but my faith in the current system is so far in the negative that zero is a definite improvement.

There needs to be global body but it definitely shouldn't be a UN one. The UN is a bunch of corrupt politicians and third world dictators. I wouldn't trust the UN with anything. The Internet needs to be a separate political entity, independent of nationstates. The UN will never agree to your points, the only reason some of its members are pushing for global control is so they can censor sites outside of their borders. America has many problems, but at least it has strong free speech protections, which is es

The ITU came up with a hell of a lot more than those. X.25 was the wire protocol used by Europe for a very long time - worked extremely well and was highly robust, compared to its US contemporary which was IPv0.

X.400 was probably heavier than necessary, but 99% of all work to improve on the limitations of SMTP have basically been reinventions of features X.400 had from the start.

X.500 exists today in the form of LDAP + ASN.1 + Digital Certificates + Federated methods of authentication. All these combined still don't cover the full spectrum of X.500 capabilities, but most of what's left wasn't really needed. However, there's nothing done today that wasn't in the standard. Not bad going.

Their other work includes little-known standards like JPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.323 and ISDN, along with developing and standardizing technology that you can't possibly have heard of like wavelength-division multiplexing for optic fibre and DSL (yes, it's an ITU product as well).

Yes, they did the OSI model (which is still the basis for most networking) and SDL, but nobody's perfect.

The OSI model is the basis for most *teaching* networking. When it comes to actual practicality, seven layers turned out to too awkward. TCP/IP uses four. Some applications add a bit more on top, but from the networking perspective they aren't too important to worry about.

Ok, agreed TCP/IP uses four and agreed that those four don't entirely agree with the OSI model (you have to talk of fractions of a level to line things up, bleagh!).

Applications increasingly add more on top, and yes technically you are correct that from a purist network perspective they aren't important. However, there's generally 2-3 of them and that matches the OSI prediction on how many application-level layers are needed, so I'm going to say that the OSI model got the ratio of total level of functionali

"do what geeks have always done, and create the Darknet version of BitTorrent. That is, a darknet that is easy to use, cryptographically strong, and damn near impossible to detect."

Sounds like Freenet. I've used it. It does work, but the anti-tracking measures impose a nasty performance overhead, so it's painfully slow and there are no real-time communications abilities. I've read that TOR and.onion site are the darknet of choice for when you want realtime comms, but never had need for either.

That's orthogonal to the body that controls the standards. After all, the fact that repressive regimes have a say in the ITU does not mean that they can arbitrarily tap your phone if you don't live in their country, now does it?

Speaking as an Indian, I can safely say that we as a country don't deserve to have ANY control over the Internet. The US might not smell of roses, but compared to an authoritarian style government like India, they're pretty damn good.

Actually scratch that. The Indian government is not authoritarian. It's just...stupid and uninformed and clueless. Ditto for most of the population.

Spoken as if the US citizens spread widely across the world are not loyal to the US and its interests. In fact, insert any country you like, it's a vacuous accusation that can be levelled against the "other" anywhere.

Now now, we are getting a bit ahead of the line, aren't we ?
"Guard cows", "Dalits", and most importantly your entire last line. I don't know where you get your ideas from, but you see India is an extremely diverse country. Yes, there are some places where cows are considered sacred and some people considered as untouchables, heck, people even kill their daughters for loving a boy of a "lower caste" But that's not the whole picture. Its just a common stereotype that the world has made of us. The rest of India is as "civilized" and modern with any other place. Now if we come to the topic at hand, there are talks going on to block some sites. In fact some service providers have already started blocking torrentz, piratebay, torrenthound etc. But again, a weak attempt. You can get the IP by pinging the site and the IP works ! Just a simple DNS block won't stop people from accessing websites.
I only hope that the people trying to set the policies regain their senses, otherwise its the dark age all over again for us.

Simple : he assumes that indian ideology is pro-blocking the internet (which it on average clearly is, no matter the local situation), and then attempts to show that his own ideology is more advanced than this mythical average indian ideology. Which is partially true, if a gross generalization.

He is wrong in the way you say. But you also paint the situation much nicer than it really is : India is in an long-winded war with Pakistan (heh non-muslim vs muslim... I wonder who attacked first). The large majori

If wishing something happened made it so, then why didn't Obama change the US into a heaven on earth ? Frankly, I hope you're right. I just think you're wrong.

In India > 800 million people live on 2$ per day. Are you seriously suggesting they are progressive thinkers ? I'm not saying it's their doing or their fault or anything like that. I just find it really hard to believe it is any other way.

Relax. That was a joke. And as a joke you should not take it seriously or assume someone has deep misconceptions about your people and culture. Its just the internet. Heck I laugh along every time someone throws me a "BR? GIBE MONI PLIS HUEHUE" comment.

Now, I should be more concerned about this simple DNS block. That might just be the beginning because when the government realize it is not effective they may improve the blocks and that can result as a great firewall for your country. I just don't agree with

UN is not going to have control over the Internet, anyway, because it lacks enforcement powers. Suppose the "anti-freedom bureaucrats" decide to block something; now what? The root servers are still hosted in certain specific countries, and said countries can always tell the UN to fuck off on that particular matter.

By the way, this is also why UN as a whole is not a "world government" in any meaningful sense. UNSC is another story, but it doesn't deal with such mundane stuff.

I'm pretty sure the UN works very hard and with some measure of success to grant itself enforcement powers in countries that matter and that typically, it suits the local government to enforce their resolutions. Using the US as an example, congress may be reluctant if enough people make a fuss about it, but would the executive even give them a say in it? It's been (sadly) demonstrated that executive orders bypass congress nowadays.

The point of moving it to the UN is that its harder for them to *try* to corrupt it to any one nations exclusive advantage (they have to fight each other).

And it doesnt matter which overload is trying to oppress the internet, they wont succeed in the long run because the internet empowers individuals more than their masters, all they can do is escalate the arms race.

Its just a matter of time until something better for the majority replaces DNS.

Which just means that they would corrupt it to the advantage of whoever is in power in any given country and would implement controls which make it harder for people to develop workarounds to government control.

Setup a different set of root servers. Start out by mirroring the ICANN root file to your root authority, and then passing that to your servers. Then maybe talk to ICANN about splitting authority over the root zone so your country/countries run the root for that part, ICANN for the rest.

Oh what's that? It is expensive and you'd rather just tell the US how to run it shit? Screw you then.

See the thing is right now the Internet doesn't have any global law over it, not even the US. It is all just a set of conventions. ICANN has the power because almost all DNS servers trust the root-servers.net roots, and they trust ICANN. However not only can you set up other roots, people have. Look at OpenNIC for one example. So while the US does have nominal de facto control, they have no de jure control and people can start ignoring them and building their own infrastructure any time they wish. It can even be an individual. You can run your very own root service, if you wish.

However, you start making it international law, then it is the kind of thing countries have to enforce, the sort of thing you can't just go your own way on. The people with guns will be saying what goes on.

So how about no, let's not have the UN in on it. Particularly since for all its faults, the US doesn't want to censor speech like China, Iran, and so on do and they all sit on the UN.

So many good comments here - but I still find it disturbing that some people truly believe that the US literally "controls" the Internet, and that having the "control" "turned over" to the UN would be a good thing. However, in reality, the US doesn't "control" the Internet. Yes, the US does "control" ICANN and IANA, but if another country wants to run their own versions of these services, there isn't anything stopping from doing so (other than money and control over their ISPs). That way, they could "contro

Control what? Control the actual fiber, cables and microwave links? Well the USA doesn't control those. Those are owned mostly by private companies generally subject to the laws and regulations of most every nation in the world. However the physical infrastructure isn't exactly The Internet. The internet is merely a bunch of networks passing traffic back and forth. The US DoC was smart enough to see that for this sort of thing to work there needs to be some point of coordination to allocate addresses and ma

For now things are in the hand of ICANN (that is, USA), and it is illegitimate enough that it cannot make crazy moves, otherwise some states will start creating their alternative DNS roots. I wonder if a UN based organization would be more capable of wrecking the Internet without partionning it.

Note that whatever the governing body is, we have no chance of having democratic oversight no it, anyway.

Most nations take International Treaties as something that has the highest force of law. In the US, that is specified in the Constitution and many other nations have similar provisions. So, if the nations get together and hammer out a treaty that says "Such and such UN body shall have ultimate authority over the 'net and we agree to do what they say," that is pretty binding. Other countries can go after them to enforce it.

So right now if you make an anti-Iran website in the US, there is little Iran can do a

Just WTF do they think they are going to when all Internet standards bodies unanimously refuse to be overseen? Shut down their mailing lists and brand all members terrorists?

Were you under the common yet critically dangerous assumption that any person in political office had the slightest chance of maintaining ownership of his own soul?

As long as the tv shows keep on bellowing forth from the screen and the coca-cola (original recipe, natch) keeps on flowing like sweet, syrupy soma, the proletariat will be satisfied. Dear IETF members: May the odds be ever in your favor!

The Internet is an international medium that needs international agreements in order to operate. Just because there are international agreements in place doesn't mean that it will be reduced to the lowest common denominator either. Radio and telephone systems are prime examples of this. (The governance isn't perfect, but it works.)

They couldn't even get a basis protocol for an Internet running. How will the same folks be able to manage an Internet?

First agenda item, due 2037: "Defining the method and process for the selection of committee oversight executive members, for the selection of sub-committee oversight members, for the definition of a framework of work the work defining co-interdependent entities of interested parties for the formations governing orthogonal autonomous regulating non-spatial, non temporal beings."

It wasn't called Mercedes back then, but Daimler and Benz did produce the first internal combustion "horseless carriages"

However the first self propelled vehicle was made by a Frenchman, Cugenot (or something like that) a century earlier - it was steam powered and had 3 wheels. (I think it was a bit top heavy with its large boiler, and overturned and killed the driver, thus making the first fatal automobile accident.

The REAL invention that made cars attractive was efficient production of gasoline, and that was due to an American, William Meriam Burton who invented thermal cracking.

... and that was due to a Russian Vladimir Shukhov who invented thermal cracking and patented it in the Russian empire (No. 12926, November 27, 1891). The American input was to tweak the technique and patent it in the United States. FTFY.

In this day and age that is called 'theft' but in reality there are precious few, if any ideas, that are not built on those of others whether in the US or elsewhere.

Um, no. Actually is was Brittan,( and I am an American thank you) They invented the first Steam powered cars and buses in the 1840's-50's. Benz made the first vehicle power by gas in 1886. And what many of my lesser educated countrymen get confused on is the Ford Modle A. It was not the first car but the fist MASS produced car. Ford invented the assembly line. Not the car.

Ford really didn't invent the assembly line, but rather was the first person to apply that to automotive assembly. Ford got the idea for the assembly line from the Chicago meat packing plants which had cows come in one side and cuts of meat coming out the other with semi-skilled laborers running the plant in between where they would only have to perform a limited number of actions that were each easily taught rather than having skilled butchers being required to completely dress and butcher a cow. Ford's